Recipe(tried): Butter beans (2)

Title: Recipe(tried): Butter Beans
Posted By: Ashley
Date: November 30th 1998
In Reply to: ISO: What are butter beans
Board: TKL Cooking Club

Butter Beans are also known a Fava Beans and even
Broad Beans. They are fairly large, maybe up to an
inch long, and a kind of butter color (hence the name).
If you ever find any suitable, here is one of my favorite
recipes

Butter Beans
Serves 4

8 oz dried butter beans
2 rashers bacon
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
3 cups chicken stock
1 clove garlic, crushed
A few fresh basil leaves, chopped
2 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped

Fry the onion, bacon and garlic in the melted butter
until soft, add the unsoaked beans and stir well then
add the stock and bring to a simmer. Place in a
moderate oven 150 C (300 F) for 1 to 2 hours or until
the beans are tender. Stir in the chopped tomatoes
and basil and serve.

Comment: Serve this either as a vegetable in its own
right or put it on a serving plate as a base for
presenting chops or duck pieces.
___________________________________________Title: Butter Beans North and South
Posted By: Ronni Lundy
Date: July 12th 1999
Board: In the Recipe with Ronni Lundy

The first time I ordered butter beans
at a restaurant north of the
Mason-Dixon Line I was surprised
when they brought me a bowl of soup
made from large dried beans. You're
right. It was delicious, but it wasn't
what we called butter beans. Since
then I've discovered that butter beans
and lima beans are indeed the same
thing, but in the south we tend to
grow them small, no larger than the
thumbnail of a medium-sized woman.
These are called baby limas
elsewhere, and when you get further
north, butter beans are, indeed, dried
lima beans usually of a larger size.

Down here we also grow different
varieties including my favorite, the
speckled butter bean which has a
purple and green mottled skin and
cooks up to a velvety texture. In
Charleston and other parts of the
coastal south, and bits of Georgia and
Alabama, they grow butter beans that
are very tiny (little fingernail sized)
and very sweet. These are called
"sivvy" or "seiva" peas.

I think the dried limas you see in the
grocery are exactly what you want. I'd
buy one bag of the large ones and
one bag of the small ones and cook
them each to see which you preferred.
Fresh the smaller beans have more
flavor, but that doesn't always hold
for dried.

You will probably want to soak them
overnight like you would pinto beans
and then the next day cover with
fresh water about an inch above the
beans, bring them to a boil, turn
down and simmer for an hour or two
until the beans are tender and creamy
inside. Put a ham hock or piece of
white bacon in the pot to season
them, and add a chopped up onion in
the last hour. You can also chop up a
little carrot and celery and add in the
last 30 minutes, if you'd like.
Remember to wait until the beans are
absolutely tender before you add any
salt. If you put the salt in earlier,
they simply won't soften enough.

The last thing: be sure to pass the
pepper grinder. Fresh black pepper is
a necessary accent to dried butter
beans. And, of course, you'll want to
make a skillet of real cornbread.

Let me know how the dried beans
work. You know, a lot of beans do
pretty well in commercial canning --
pintos, black-eyed and crowder peas,
for instance -- but you're right that
butter beans don't work at all. They
get too mushy in the can. Good luck!

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